Learn as Much as You Can

You'll Have it to Use

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

There is a recurring trope circulating among the old and crusty about things they learned in school and never had to use in real life. Two of the popular topics are math like algebra and oddly enough learning to play the recorder. As is the way of social media, these tropes are met with a cadre of people who agree that they have never once in their adult lives used algebra or have played the recorder. Then there is the other side that will tirelessly list out the myriad ways in which they have used algebra and what their nascent recorder learning ultimately did for their music careers. The two sides then have a useless argument and ultimately everyone leaves until the next time the trope comes around. What always amazes me about these futile internet fights is that both sides seem to miss the bigger picture. And that is, whatever skill you learn, be it algebra, the recorder, or something else, you will use it because you’ll have it to use.

Huh?

Hear me out on this one. Say I decide to start learning Portuguese today, which honestly sounds like a fantastic idea because who wouldn’t want to learn Portuguese? Once I begin learning that language a whole host of things seen and unseen will open up for me. I’ll be rewiring my brain. I’ll become able to converse with people I would not necessarily have been able to converse with before. I will get a richer understanding of my own language and culture. I might start thinking about visiting Portugal or Brazil or Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique when I might not have considered it previously. Those are just a few of the obvious things. More subtle things will happen too. I will start noticing Portuguese-related things in the world that I missed before and that will open up a host of other interesting things. The list goes on and on. Most importantly, I will have a skill that I will be able to use. This is the important part because none of us knows where life will take us.

People who scoff at learning different things because they can’t see a practical application for them in their lives are working under the false assumption that they know exactly where their lives will take them. It’s a great idea to dream and plan for a specific life path but talk to anyone who has been around a few decades and they will tell you that things rarely go exactly how you plan them. In fact, often they go much better. You will live beyond your wildest dreams or imaginings and do things you never thought you would do.

Back when I was teaching Latin in private school, I had a student whom I adored but was self-admittedly the consummate goof-off. He did fine, but not great, despite having the ability to do so. The fact was that he just didn’t see Latin as having anything to do with his future plans. All my talk about rewiring your brain, beefing up your logic skills, how cool it is to learn about another culture and how that can give you real insight into your own, yada yada yada fell on completely deaf ears. Well, three years into college he emailed me and told me he was taking Greek because he had a calling and was heading into ministry. He said it was going okay but that he really wished he had taken Latin more seriously because it would have helped so much with learning Greek. I didn’t say, “I told you so,” even though I kind of wanted to, because he already knew it, plus that’s just mean. What I did say, though, was, “Isn’t it funny where life has taken you?” Not ha ha funny, but ironic. He knew what I meant, and he agreed. He had no idea just three years before that Latin of all things would be a skill he would need for furthering his life’s work. We just can’t see everything that is going to happen for us.

Returning then to the old and crusty people on the internet. How did they get so crusty? Surely people with more years of life experience should know that life rarely takes us where we think we’re going. Are they failing to see how the different things they learned over all their years allowed them to do the things they did? Are they missing the connections? Probably. After all, so many of the benefits of what we learn are unseen. What’s more disturbing, though, is the thought that their failure to learn things, because they saw them as inapplicable to their lives, actually kept their worlds small, their paths boring, and their opportunities few. In short, they didn’t use skills because they didn’t have them to use, and their lives have become an internet crust-fest about elementary school recorders.

Ultimately the choice is ours in what skills we learn and how well we learn them, and there certainly isn’t enough time to do everything. But it pays to keep in mind the fact that the skills we learn, whatever they may be, will be of use to us because we will have those skills to use. And no matter how dull, weird or inapplicable they may seem, they will bring us interesting and meaningful opportunities. To completely mangle a wonderful poem by Robert Frost, I personally am choosing the path less crusty: not scoffing at learning new things but embracing them and learning them well, even if I don’t see a direct application for them in my life. For I know it will make all the difference.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost